Getting RealHere Are the Stars Who Have Openly Struggled With Eating Disorders

We all know what it’s like to feel the pressure to be perfect, but when you’re thrust into the spotlight at a very young age, that pressure can become way too much to handle. Oftentimes, we see celebrities resort to dangerous habits, such as doing drugs, drinking too much or even depriving themselves of the nutrients their bodies need so they can look a certain way.

In the past, several celebrities have opened up about their experiences with such disorders, and although several of these celebrities feel shame while revealing their struggle, they do so in hopes of helping their fans overcome similar issues. Jennette McCurdy, for example, just wrote a piece for HuffPostabout her own experience with an eating disorder, which began when she was just 11 years old and spanned for roughly 10 years.

The iCarly actress is just one of several celebs who shared that they did, in fact, battle an eating disorder. Why? Because now that she’s been in recovery for two years, she wants to help those who might be going through the same thing.

Scroll through the gallery to see which other celebrities have opened up about their eating disorders.

Jennette McCurdy

Jennette told Huffpost, “My disordered eating started when I was 11. As a child actress working in Hollywood, I quickly learned that remaining physically small for my age meant I had a better chance of booking more roles. Unfortunately, I had a trusty and dedicated companion ready to help me with my burgeoning anorexia: my mom!”

Although the former Nickelodeon star doesn’t hold it against her late mother at all, she did admit that she was a big contributor to her disordered eating habits. She recalls always feeling like her mom was never happy with the way she looked, which likely had a lot to do with the fact that she was anorexic herself.

When she booked iCarly, the stress really took a toll, and the actress admitted that she became even more “fixated on food and my body.” In fact, she would measure her thighs with a tape measure every night before going to sleep.

Clearly, these patterns aren’t healthy ones, and now that Jennette is in recovery, she finally realizes how much she was hurting herself by binging, purging and not giving her body the nutrients it needs.

“Now I’ve been in recovery maintenance for two years. I’m no longer actively engaging in disordered eating. After spending a lot of time in therapy working on myself and confronting what I’ve experienced, I finally feel like I have the perspective required to write about what I’ve been through.”

Shane Dawson

The YouTube star commended Jennette for bravely opening up to the world about her own eating disorder, saying, “I’ve never related to something more. thank u jennette for being so open about this. if anyone out there is struggling with an eating disorder please read this.”

i’ve never related to something more. thank u jennette for being so open about this. if anyone out there is struggling with an eating disorder please read this. :,)❤️ https://t.co/AS9dmWdJDh

For those of you who are wondering, the reason Shane found Jeannette’s struggle to be so relatable is because he suffered from an eating disorder too. In one of his videos from 2014, the YouTuber opened up to fans about his abnormal eating patterns, which he said stemmed from Body Dysmorphia after losing 150-200 pounds.

“I had basically created this thing in my head where I couldn’t eat anything and I had to go to the gym 10 hours a day,” he said. “I was obsessed with losing weight. It was what I knew how to do.”

Unfortunately, he continued obsessing over his weight loss even after he shed all that weight, and it was never quite enough. These days, however, the internet personality seems to be doing much better. How do we know? Well, when one fan asked him how he felt about old photos from after he’d lost the weight, he responded with an inspirational message.

“I genuinely thought i was fat back then,” he said. “I remember not even wanting to leave the house that day cause of it. it’s so crazy how things look so different when u look back on them. moral of the story, be nicer to yourself and ur future self will thank you. that’s my new goal.”

Lana Condor

In a 2019 interview with Elle Canada, the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Beforeactress shared her own personal experience with an eating disorder and body dysmorphia because she wants people to nourish their bodies and stop getting hung up on the idea of being a certain size.

“I know what it’s like to have an eating disorder and body dysmorphia — and also what it’s like to be a friend to someone who has that,” she told the mag. “I think it’s time to give people comfort. You have to eat. You have to stop thinking that a certain body shape is ideal, because it’s not.”

Camila Mendes

In October 2018, the Riverdaleactress told Shape, “I’ve struggled with bulimia. It happened a little bit in high school and again when I was in college. Then it came back when I started working in this industry with fittings all the time and watching myself on camera. I had such an emotional relationship with food and anxiety about everything I put into my body. If I ate a sweet, I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to eat for five hours now.’ I was always punishing myself. I was even anxious about healthy food. I was consumed with the details of what I was eating, and I always felt as if I was doing something wrong.”

Once she realized she had a problem, the actress began seeing a therapist and nutritionist. Now, she’s learned so much more about nutrition, and in turn, she’s learned how to take better care of her body. Good for you, Camila!

Demi Lovato

After going to a treatment facility at 18-years-old, the “Sorry Not Sorry” singer told People, “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days where I just want to stay in bed all day because I’m ashamed of my body. It’s a struggle I’ll probably have to deal with for the rest of my life. But I have so much life to live; I don’t want to waste it.”

Dove Cameron

In a 2018 interview with StyleCaster, Dove said, “I’ve never said this before, but I had such a bad case of anorexia. I was so badly down that hole. I was not eating for days sometimes. But it was because I thought I needed to be absolutely tiny to be loved. I genuinely thought I needed to be as skinny as I possibly could to be loved and appreciated and good enough.”

Luckily, Dove has an amazing support system, and she even shared screenshots of messages from her BF, Thomas Doherty, to show people how supportive he really is. In the texts, he told her how proud he was that she was working on overcoming her ED.

Zayn Malik

Zayn is great at expressing his emotions through music, and TBH, it’s helped him a lot with overcoming his eating disorder.

In a 2017 interview with The Sunday Times, the former One Direction crooner spoke about revealing his disorder, saying, “People saw strength in that, and they didn’t seem to expect it from a guy, but they expect it from a female, which to me is crazy. We’re all human. People are often afraid to admit difficulties, but I don’t believe that there should be a struggle with anything that’s the truth.” PREACH.

Debby Ryan

“Dysmorphia has been a dark passenger of mine for years. I first noticed it at 13, when I was told to draw an image of my body, and the silhouette and shape of what I saw apparently did not line up at all with what everyone else saw,” Debby said to The Sydney Morning Herald. “I don’t know to this day if I’ve ever looked in the mirror and seen what other people see when they look at me. And I have never had a day, not one day, where I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘Cool.’ It used to be all I wanted but I’ve accomplished a lot in 12 years, so maybe I don’t need that to feel fulfilled any more.”

Despite having gone through an eating disorder herself, the former Disney Channel actress came under fire for her role in Netflix’s Insatiable because viewers felt the series was guilty of body-shaming. In fact, there was even a petition to get it canceled. Yikes!

Aaron Carter

After getting criticized for his weight in 2017, Aaron fired back on Twitter explaining that he has a stress condition that affects his eating patterns.

“By the way y’all wanna know why I’m so skinny? It’s because @ 19 i was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, I didn’t choose that. be kind to me. … It’s a terrible stress condition that affects me having an appetite and I’m sorry this is the way I am. Basically I have an eating disorder.”

Even though he didn’t want to speak on it, it’s pretty cool that he opened up to his fans about what he’s been facing for several years — especially because there’s so much stigma surrounding males with eating disorders.

Alexis Ren

Based on the model’s Instagram, you would think she has the perfect life. However, she opened up to Cosmo in May 2017, and as it turns out, that’s not the case at all.

The influencer told the mag, “I was my worst critic ever. The only sense of relief I had was to be able to monitor my eating and my workouts. It was a vicious cycle where when I did eat, I just felt worse, so I didn’t want to eat, and ate less and less and less. Everyone around me was like, ‘Alexis, what are you doing?’ But I felt like my body was the only reason why people liked me.”

The good news is that the former Dancing With the Stars contestant has since overcome her ED and is healthier than ever before. Congrats, Alexis!

Alyson Stoner

The former Disney Channel actress got real about her own eating disorder in a 2019 interview with People, explaining that it got so bad that casting directors wouldn’t even let her read at auditions.

“They would just tell me that I need help and [need] to go home and take care of my health because my eyes were sunken in and I was tired and lifeless,” she said. “The scary part is I wasn’t even the smallest person on set.” Luckily, she’s doing much better since seeking treatment.

Troian Bellisario

The Pretty Little Liars actress has been pretty open about suffering with anorexia as a teenager. After speaking out about it in interviews years before, the actress appeared in a 2016 PSA, which exposed what life with the disorder is really like.

“With anorexia, a lot of it is presenting a front of ‘everything is okay’ as you’re slowly killing yourself. Gone were the days when I was just a happy, carefree kid who was running around, and suddenly I felt this inability to interact with people and to nourish myself.”

Lily Collins

While promoting her movie To the Bone, Lily Collins revealed that she felt a personal connection to her character, who suffered from an ED.

“This was definitely a more dramatic role for me,” she said in an interview with IMDB Studio. “I suffered with eating disorders when I was a teenager as well. I wrote a book last year and I wrote my chapter on my experiences a week before I got Marti’s script and it was like the universe putting these things in my sphere to help me face, kind of dead on, a fear that I used to have.”

She went on to say that she was grateful for the role because it allowed her to open up the conversation on something that was considered to be taboo. Good job, Lily!

Alexa Penavega

After a producer called her fat, Alexa struggled to overcome bulimia for a total of six years. What’s even worse was that there wasn’t a textbook out there that could explain the reality of the disease.

“You read textbooks and it’s just so, well, textbook. ‘This is how you get over bulimia.’ But it is so much deeper than that,’ she told People. “I wish I’d had somebody who could have told me, ‘It’s scary.’ You struggle giving it up. You want to get rid of it but you struggle because, in a strange way, you enjoy it.”

Kesha

Kesha’s gone through a lot in her life, but before the Dr. Luke sexual assault allegations, the “Praying” singer struggled with an eating disorder, which she went to rehab for in 2014.

“There was a lot of not eating — and I started to think being hungry to the point of feeling almost faint was a positive thing,” she told Vogue in 2015. “The worse it got, the more positive feedback I was getting. Inside I was really unhappy, but outside, people were like, ‘Wow, you look great.'”

Candace Cameron Bure

Unlike several other stars on this list, the Fuller House actress developed her eating disorder after she’d gotten married.

She told ET, “I kind of lost my identity in a sense and what happened was I turned to food for comfort when my husband was traveling and when I was alone. I had a very unhealthy relationship with food that turned into bulimia. I dealt with it for several years, but it wasn’t about body image and trying to feel good. It was about trying to find comfort or fill voids within myself.”

Hilary Duff

The Lizzie McGuire star’s eating disorder largely went unnoticed, but for several of her teenage years, Hilary was dangerously thin.

The actress told Perez Hilton, “I got pretty skinny when I was between 17 and 19. I don’t know what exactly made me get on that kick, but at the time I was starting to become aware of what people said about me and how I looked in pictures. I literally ate nothing but steamed vegetables and broiled or grilled chicken, with nothing else. I was touring at the time, traveling everywhere, and I felt so run down. Not giving your body enough of what it needs is really dangerous. I regret it because I don’t think I was happy then.”

Since then, she’s focused on having a balanced diet, and TBH, she looks better and happier than ever.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Youth Crisis Hotline at 1-800-448-4663.